It is with a skeptical eye we view many of the revenue enhancements included in Gov. Maggie Hassan's budget proposals. One, however, that we can fully endorse is an increase in the cigarette tax.

As Hassan said while pitching a 30-cent increase in the state cigarette tax: “New Hampshire has the highest youth smoking rate in the Northeast, with 19.8 percent of high school students who smoke cigarettes. ... Cigarette taxes nationwide have proven to be one of the most effective ways to prevent youth smoking.”

To be more specific about Hassan's proposal, the last biennial session of the Legislature lowered the tax by 10 cents in hopes of spurring cross-border sales. But that did not happen as wholesalers hiked their prices, effectively castrating the tax bill and leading to a multimillion dollar shortfall in tax revenues.

With Hassan's proposed addition of 20 cents and a repeal of the earlier 10-cent reduction, New Hampshire's tax would stand at $1.98 per pack — still the lowest in New England, according to www.tobaccofreekids.org.

But the benefits to increasing the tax go far beyond boosting state coffers and dissuading young smokers. Again from tobaccofreekids. org.:

■ Cigarette price and tax increases work even more effectively to reduce smoking among males, blacks, Hispanics, and lower-income smokers.

■ A cigarette-tax increase that raises prices by 10 percent will reduce smoking among pregnant women by seven percent, preventing thousands of spontaneous abortions and stillborn births, and saving tens of thousands of newborns from suffering from smoking-affected births and related health consequences.

Those who quit also improve the quality of life for others.

Secondhand smoke causes other kinds of diseases and death, according to Cancer.org. Secondhand smoke can cause harm in many ways. Each year in the United States alone, it is responsible for:

■ An estimated 46,000 deaths from heart disease in people who are current non-smokers

■ About 3,400 lung cancer deaths in non-smoking adults

■ Worse asthma and asthma-related problems in up to 1 million asthmatic children

■ Between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (lung and bronchus) in children under 18 months of age, with 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year

■ Children exposed to secondhand smoke are much more likely to be put into intensive care when they have the flu, they are in the hospital longer, and are more likely to need breathing tubes than kids who aren't exposed to SHS

■ In the United States, the costs of extra medical care, illness, and death caused by SHS are more than $10 billion per year.

All this adds up to plenty of motivation to increase New Hampshire's cigarette tax and to receive some financial benefit while improving the air we breathe and the health of more and more Granite Staters.